Front Cover textual analysis

Denotation

The magazine cover displays a coloured photograph of a man looking directly at the camera. It is a mid shot showing from his waist up; arms chest and head. He is stood in front of dark blue tiles covering the whole of the magazine and his skin is rather wet, this may be in order to give a sexy wet bathroom feel to the audience maybe in order to portray a scene from a music video or to highlight the sex God image that this character portrays. Behind the man’s head is the capitalised Vibe mast head. In front of the man are 6 stories in red  and white flushed left and right of his body. We then have the name of the man in large white writing placed on the right of him and the name of another artist placed in white medium sized writing on his top left. The red writing in each of the story names signifies the important factor in the story  the white bits are in smaller writing and the use of the white is rather general and have no link to the stars. The website is place on the bottom left in red and white capitalised writing following the colour trend; the dot is an image of a target bored. Bellow this is the barcode and on the opposite side is the upcoming magazine featuring the man whose name has been place on the left side of the man in the image.

Masthead

The word vibe is displayed in a straight forward manner, no fancy writing or excess material just capitalised large red writing, the font used is and connotes boldness and importance possible portraying a sense of music being a great importance in the life of R n B lovers. The word vibe derives from the word vibration and is an abbreviation; it is known to mean feeling for e.g. I’m feeling a good vibe from these people. In this case it would be used for music fans as the “vibe” of the music or that the music is giving me.

Character

The cover photograph is of a well known American singer ‘Trey songz’

Composition-he is posed in a very masculine “I want to rock your bed” kind of way his pose body language and lack of clothing is very sexually suggestive and provocative.

Costume- his lack of clothing shows of his well toned muscled figure, we can see that he is wearing Calvin Klein boxers very low almost exposing his private area again portraying his well know sex God image. The lack of costume was specifically chosen to appeal to it’s target audience, which are most likely to be women, a secondary audience would be gay men.

NVC- His non verbal communication is very sexy. He is tensed showing of his best assets and his eyes are staring down the audience in a very sexy calling manner. The water dripping down his skin shows of his toned assets.

Lighting-the lighting is quite low but high enough to glisten on the assets that are deliberately trying to attract the audience

Setting-the setting is not clear but the dark blue tiles could be assumed as bathroom scenery hence the water.

Cover-lines:

The main cover-line that relates to his photograph is “Trey songz-the hardest in R n B” this is making a reference to his music as trey songz has been number one in many different charts  for a period of 3 months and his last two albums ready and trey day have been  the main issue of discussion  plus his tour ‘OMG’ which has been all over the TV and is still going on. “Trey Day is here! Voted the top album of 2009 by VIBE Magazine (Ready), the hardest dude in R&B covers the publication’s April/May 2010 issue. Jeezy covers the other. It’s yet another accomplishment in a banner year for Songz. “I wanted to push the sex envelope with Trey’s shoot visually,” says VIBE editor in chief Jermaine Hall. “We were able to come up with shots that are equally entertaining for men and women.” The issue hit stands nationwide April 13” not only does the magazine focus on music but also on hard hitting topics such as the disaster in Haiti and fashion “4 ways to rock a suit”.

Target audience

Considering all of these points the likely target audience would be females aged 18-26 the secondary audience would be men hence the cover line ‘4 ways to rock a suit’. They are likely to have knowledge on the latest R n B music in the industry, issues of the world that have been discussed regularly by stars e.g. Haiti. They may be well educated or still in education and have a general interest in all R n B music.